Employers are required to indicate into which HMRC pre-determined list of hourly bands each employee's normal working week falls. 

This reports to HMRC the number of weekly contracted hours the employee is contracted to work, as opposed to the actual hours worked per week. Thus, this field should not require amendment unless there is an amendment to the employee's contract.

The current hourly bands to use are:
 

A    Less than 16 hours

B    16 hours or more, but less than 24 hours

C    24 hours or more, but less than 30 hours

D    30 hours or more

E    Other

'E Other' should only be used, for example, for workers on zero hour contracts, no set hours or pensioners being paid a company retirement pension or annuity. 

It is important to record the correct number of hours your employee has worked to help ensure they receive the right amount of benefits and tax credits they are entitled to.



To assign the correct hourly band:
 

• Choose the Employee menu
• Select the employee from the employee listing on the left menu.
• Once the employee is selected, choose the 'Tax, NICs, RTI' option within the employee record.
• There is a dedicated field called Contracted hours per week, this displays the HMRC hourly bands. Choose the appropriate band for the employee in order for this to flow through to the FPS submission for RTI purposes.
  
   

Please note: The hourly band selected has no bearing on the actual payroll hours paid to the employee.

 

Irregular payment patterns

From the HMRC listing of hourly bands, band 'E Other' applies to employees who are not paid on a regular basis for example:

 

• casual or seasonal employees
• employees on maternity leave
• employees on long term sick leave
• any employee who for any reason will not be paid for a period of three months or more
  
   

HMRC will check if an employee has not been paid for a certain period of time and will treat them as having left that employment. Setting this indicator on every FPS submitted for that employee avoids that happening.

If there is no payment due for an irregular paid employee in a period, finalise the payslips with zero pay and send FPS as per normal procedure.

To keep seasonal, bank staff or zero hour contract employees on BrightPay, finalise the employee's payslips with zero pay until they are ready to be paid again. At this point, you can add the salary / hours to the payslip and continue to process as usual.

To deal with zero pay for an employee in a period, you can do the following:

1. To Exclude Zero Payslips from Distribution:
   • Navigate to the Payroll section in BrightPay.
   • Click on "Create / Send Payslips."
   • Select "Download Payslip PDF for Multiple Employees" and then click on "Customise."
   • Make sure to tick the option “Exclude payslips with zero take-home pay.” This will prevent any payslips showing £0.00 from being printed, emailed, or downloaded.
2. Zeroising Payslips (if necessary):
   • If you'd like to set pay amounts to £0.00 for specific employees who aren’t getting paid that week, go to Payroll and select "More," then choose "Zeroise Payslips."
   • Select the relevant employees and pay items, then follow the prompts.
3. Finalising Zero Payslips:
   • Even if an employee is not receiving payment during a period, it’s important to finalise their payslip with a £0.00 amount so future payroll processing remains smooth.

Note: While the above will not show the zero payslips when downloading, printing or emailing on BrightPay, the employee will still receive a zero payslip in the Employee Portal, although no payslip notification will be sent. Currently, there is no setting that can override them viewing the zero payslip in the EESSP once it has been finalised and the usual availability has arrived.